RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Outsourced hearing in an orb-weaving spider that uses its web as an auditory sensor
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.10.17.464740
DO 10.1101/2021.10.17.464740
A1 Jian Zhou
A1 Junpeng Lai
A1 Gil Menda
A1 Jay A. Stafstrom
A1 Carol I. Miles
A1 Ronald R. Hoy
A1 Ronald N. Miles
YR 2022
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/01/22/2021.10.17.464740.abstract
AB Hearing is a fundamental sense of many animals, including all mammals, birds, some reptiles, amphibians, fish, and arthropods. The auditory organs of these animals are extremely diverse in anatomy after hundreds of millions of years of evolution, yet all are made up of cellular tissues and are morphologically part of bodies of animals. Here we show hearing in the orb-weaving spider, Larinioides sclopetarius is not constrained by the organism’s body but is extended through outsourcing hearing to its extended phenotype, the proteinaceous, self-manufactured orb-web. We find the wispy, wheel-shaped orb-web acts as a hyperacute acoustic “antenna” to capture the sound-induced air particle movements that approach the maximum physical efficiency, better than the acoustic responsivity of all previously known eardrums. By sensing the motion of web threads, the spider remotely detects and localizes the source of an incoming airborne acoustic wave such as those emitted by approaching prey or predators. By outsourcing its acoustic sensors to its web, the spider is released from body size constraints and permits the araneid spider to increase its sound-sensitive surface area enormously, up to 10,000 times greater than the spider itself. The spider also enables the flexibility to functionally adjust and regularly regenerate its “external eardrum” according to its needs. The “outsourcing” and “supersizing” of auditory function in spiders provides unique features for studying extended and regenerative sensing, and designing novel acoustic flow detectors for precise fluid dynamic measurement and manipulation.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.